Last year for International Talk Like a Pirate Day, the Clements Library Chronicles highlighted a variety of materials related to pirates, including books, manuscripts, and a broadside poem. This year, we offer just one exceptional item: the Pirate Atlas. The Clements...
On April 1, the Clements Library celebrates the birth of our founder, William L. Clements (1861-1934). This tradition was first recorded in the Clements Library Annual Report for 1937-1938: “Our new period started with the ceremony which in years to come...
Saint Valentine’s Day was first established in 496 A.D., and became associated with the celebration of romantic love in the Middle Ages. In the United States, mass-produced paper valentines were first sold in the mid-1800s. The Ephemera collection at the...
The Clements Library has a wealth of materials on African American history, documenting many aspects of slavery, the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, and beyond. Much research remains to be done with these materials, to more fully explore the African American...
This holiday card from 1929 was created for Mr. William L. Clements, the founder of the Clements Library. The illustration is based on an etching of the exterior of the library by Wilfred B. Shaw. His work can also be seen in the circular Clements logo on the library...
While the origins of this obscure December 7 holiday are unclear, the tradition of having letter-writing days can be traced back to a time when handwritten letters were the most common form of communication. Before the invention of the telegraph, the typewriter, or...
Although we traditionally trace the origins of this holiday to the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving celebration in 1621, it did not become an annual celebration in the United States until 1863 and a federal holiday in 1941. In the colonial era, days of thanksgiving...
In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, we offer several examples from the pirate-related materials at the Clements Library. The library has a variety of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, and maps related to the history of pirates, buccaneers, privateers, and...
